Eca de Queiros and the Character as Fiction

Abstract

Abstract This study analyzes the presence in Eça de Queirós’s fiction of literary characters created by writers other than Eça. From this point of view, these characters become fiction, frequently entailing, through their presence, metafictional considerations. As such, the very concept of literary characters is the object of attention, through both the narrators in Eça’s texts and also their presence in the fictional discourse of some of Eça’s characters, sometimes explicitly referred to as writers. Furthermore, these borrowed fictional characters bring to Eça’s work possibilities for identification (such as the so-called Bovarism), determined by the circulation of these characters within the cultural imaginary represented in these novels. The same occurs, from a broader perspective, with mythological or biblical figures, in a variety of iconographic representations. Generally speaking, the aspects analyzed in this study indicate the fictional afterlife of these characters and the function of metalepsis in the construction of fiction, including in this construction the refiguration of fictional characters.